Need more users for my internet startup (Growthhacking)

If you try to serve everybody, you end up serving nobody. Therefore, review the client segments you're targeting. Are they sharply defined? If you approach your prospects, do they clearly feel you offer value to them?

Imagine the following two fitness trainers: 

A) Fitness trainer A advertises his services to everybody - "as everybody needs fitness" (and he's right!)

B) Fitness trainer B offers his services to women who recently gave birth, promising to help them to get their prematernal weight back. He develops a tailored fitness & nourishment plan for this segment, and advertises in magazines read by pregnant women or those who gave birth recently. 

Which fitness trainer will get traction more quickly? Whose clients are more likely to recommend him to their friends (who are in the same situation)? 

Note: Starting out with a niche doesn't mean that you have to stick to it for life. Even Facebook started out with a niche (college students). The power of focusing on a niche is that it gives you initial momentum. Once the ball is rolling you can successively widen your scope. 

They don't say for nothing  "The riches are in the niches"!

Think how you could grow on a platform which already managed to get a significant audience.

Airbnb's growth hack on Craigslist is legendary, however also a bit grey hat as it violated Craigslist's terms of services (which you shouldn't do, obviously). Make a longlist of platforms which are somewhat related to what you do, and think carefully for everyone of them how you could leverage off of their success. 

Note: although large and established platforms should be your focus, don't forget to look at emerging platforms as it might be easier to get your foot in the door with them (enabling you to grow with them). 

Email is one of the most powerful marketing tools available. Many people use their inbox as their "to do"-list, so this means once you have their email you can put yourself on that to do list - whenever you want. 

Therefore, think about every possible opportunity to get people's emails, think thoroughly when there are opportunities to email them, and observe & optimize your campaigns (opens & clicks) as you go along. It's one of the most effective marketing strategies out there. 

Become an expert on growth hacking (= the art of getting many users quickly). Read everything about it. Great resources are growthhackers.com and growthhackertv. 

Often the best way to get users is to give people the opportunity to sign up to the real thing (not just a pre-launch page). Therefore aim to launch soon; it doesn't matter if your product is not perfect yet. According to Reid Hoffman (Founder of LinkedIn): "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late!".

Not only will this give you actual users, but something much more important: feedback. People can now tell you what's good about it and what is not, which is crucial information for you to develop your product into a real value-add. 

There are many channels and techniques for you to get users for your startup (see all the other solutions). However, you don't have to apply them all. You only need to find the one or two channels which make the difference. 

Therefore, first brainstorm which channels may make sense to you. Test them thoroughly, and if they don't work for you, move on to the next. 

However, if you find a channel which works then don't just be happy with it, and continue testing many other channels, but focus on it: why did it work? What can you do to optimize it further? 

In most cases, startups get their growth by identifying one or two channels which work for them - not more. Therefore find yours, and double down. 

Collecting users takes time, and the eariler you start with it the better.

Setting up a pre-launch page to collect emails (= first users) is pretty easy these days as there are inexpensive services just made for this: Launchrock.com and Unbounce.com are classics, but there are several more, see this overview.  

If you haven't launched yet you have a big advantage: you can promise your prelaunch site visitors almost everything on earth so that they give you their email address (of course, it shouldn't be entirely divorced from reality). 

For example, promise them to fix a major problem in a cool way. If your pre-launch page looks professional enough and people don't see any reason why the service will not be cool, their imagination will "fill in the blanks" and they will almost certainly want to get alerted when you launch.

For that reason it also makes sense to stay somewhat vague. Provide enough information so that they see a (potentially) strong value, but not enough so that some of them may realize it's not for them (which is actually the case - no product serves everybody). Some pre-launch sites succeeded with being as vague as only the title "Something cool is coming to San Francisco" (read here), however most likely that wouldn't do it anymore. 

Also, try to trigger the FOMO (fear of missing out) feeling as strongly as possible, so that they really feel the urge to give their email to you.  

A popular - and effective - way to generate some pre-launch buzz (and maybe even go viral) is the prelaunch waiting list. 

Characteristics: 

• Everybody can see at which point of the waiting list he/she is
• The higher up on the waiting list, the sooner that user will get access to the site (e.g. invite to a beta-version)
• The order of people on the waiting list depends on two factors: a) When they signed up (=> increasing the incentive to sign up soon) and b) How many friends they invite (=> Increasing incentive to share). 

This strategy works best if you offer a product which people want to get access to as soon as possible (obviously). An example for a company which played this strategy really well is Robinhood.com, see this case study.

Adding a sharing-feature to your prelaunch-site is obvious, however: how do you make people use it? 

Apart from giving people who share earlier access (see solution "Create a waiting list") you can also think of any other benefits that you only give to those who share your site while still in prelaunch-mode. 

For example, if your site uses a credit point system (once live), you can make the exclusive offer to your prelaunch-site-visitors that they get 10 starter credits if they invite at least 5 friends (or make at least 5 friends join). Think about all the (non-free) benefits your final site will offer, and then give some of that for free to people who share your prelauch site. 

You could also do a competition, e.g. the user(s) who invite most people win a price. This may lead crazy sharing, provided the prize is big enough (you may still be able to afford it as there will only be very few prices). You can also do it the Harry's way, giving different prices depending on number of people users made join, which lead to 100,000 prelaunch sign-ups in one week (!). 

To get most effect from this, use email marketing wisely. For example, if you give 10 starter credits to everyone who made 5 friends join to the prelaunch page, send that user already an email after the first friend joined, saying something along the lines of "Congratulations - your friend XY signed up on the prelaunch page! Only 4 to go" so that they may invite even more people to it. Most of the shares will come from a minorty of prelaunch-visitors (the old 80/20 rule applies here too), so really think hard how you can encourage users who shared your site to share it even more. 

To get a feeling for how prelaunch-pages can be designed, have a look at the collections from Kickofflabs or Speckyboy.

If you haven't lauched yet, but already have a working beta version, then you can approach bloggers and offer them beta-invites (for their readers) if they write about you, or allow a guest post from you. 

This way you get some coverage, and the blogger gets interesting content with an exclusive benefit to their readers (they are always looking for good content, and exclusive access to their readers is a strong plus). 

Betalist gives you some audience in case you're not available to the general public yet. Submit your startup here. 

If you want people to use (or share) your service then learn what makes people tick by reading good books on psychology. 

A great primer (also for advanced marketers) is Robert Cialdini's "Influence". Buy it here and never look back. 

To overcome the "chicken and egg"-challenge when growing a marketplace, focus on getting the "producers" (sellers/merchants etc.) on board first.

One technique is to do that is by providing a service which allows producers to cater to their existing consumers in a better way. This way they will naturally bring consumers, and once the consumers are on the platform they will see offers from other providers (than the one which brought them to the platform) and make it work like a real marketplace. 

See examples for this on Platformed.

If your platform allows producers to showcase their work then they will bring clients naturally to the platform.

Youtube is a classic example: after users uploaded their videos they want the videos to get watched often. So they spread the links to it and therefore - even if they didn't intend that - help Youtube to grow. 

A good example for this is Yelp: 

Yelp provided information about certain restaurants (without the restaurants' involvement) which users (consumers) could vote and comment on. After the restaurants got a lot of reviews there was a strong incentive for the restaurants to "claim" their space on Yelp (so that they can modify their description, upload pictures etc.) and therefore they got onboarded later, i.e. at the end there were both parties needed for a marketplace. 

Check out Platformed to learn how this might be generalized for other marketplaces as well.  

When you start out you may not have your producers (creators/sellers etc.) on board. However, if you're an information platform you may use existing producers' information from other platforms and present it in a better way, e.g. with a better description, pictures, a better search function and/or navigation experience.

For example, several startups have used Craigslist as a source of information and presented it in a better way (which however Craigslist is not always too fond of). 

Another example is this solution (for growing Solutionbay), based on the content on Platformed.

Think how you can provide value to one user group (producer's or consumers) which doesn't require the other user group, i.e. which doesn't require a marketplace (yet). 

Examples for this are Square, OpenTable, Delicious and Instagram as described here and here.

This means: Maybe you have to start out as something entirely different than what you have in mind long-term, just so that you reach critical mass which is required for a marketplace to work.

In most marketplaces one user group is more difficult to acquire than the other - the classic example are dating sites, where it's much easier to get men to join than women. 

So how to get the "difficult" user group to join? One option are monetary incentives (e.g. free drinks for girls) but also non-monetary incentives may work as described here. 

To get things started, consider creating the first products/content yourself to kickstart the marketplace with some initial supply. 

Two examples:

• When Apple launched the app store, they created a range of apps themselves so that people could download at least something. Later third party developed apps took over as we all know. 
• I (co-founder of Solutionbay) entered this solution ;)

Building two-sided marketplaces is difficult enough. Three-sided marketplaces are almost impossible to create - unless you know some tricks. 

In the video below, Bastian Lehmann from Postmates talks about how they successfully built a three-sided marketplace. Postmates is a delivery service with three sides: 1.) Merchants (who sell the products), 2.) Delivery guys (who deliver the products to consumers) and 3.) Consumers. 

In a nutshell, Bastian proposes to focus on two sides first (three at once is too difficult) and then later approach the third. He suggests to leave the side to target last which does not require interaction with both parties (i.e. in his case the merchants).

Watch the video to get the full story: 

If your site contains content, then search engines can be crucial to get traffic and users. Have a look at solutions to make your website rank higher in search engines. 

If you're just starting out, then naturally you're going to focus on getting users in the first place, and not how to retain them. That's fine.

However, quite soon after you've launched and first users join start thinking about retention. Retention is just too important to ignore. If you have a hole in your bucket, what do you do? Run faster so that less water leaks? No. You fix the hole.

Maybe below video makes clear how important retention really is:

Habits are extremely powerful. Once your users got used to your product, they don't want to miss it anymore - and will not churn. 

Therefore, be quite generous with how much access you give your users to your product so that they have enough time to form the habit. How long this takes depends on the product, however a good rule of thumb is 30-45 days. The good old "30 day free trial" (which is as old as the software industry) is based on this principle.

Quick growth mainly comes from sharing. And how do you make people share your product? There are many techniques however they are all second to this one: pick a product which is inherently viral.

Some services only make sense for users if they share it. For example, a new chat application or community website (which the world may need, or not) is inherently viral: for it to make sense for users (i.e. add value) they need to share it with their friends. Facebook, Twitter and many others only grew so quickly because of this principle.

The reason for this is that you don't need to do a lot of convincing to make people invite their friends - once they bought into the concept (at least partially) it's just logical to them to invite their friends as next step.

Therefore consider carefully which product you want to put your energy into. Your original idea may provide good value - but if it's not inherently viral your path to growth will be much more difficult. 

Read this great article from Smashingmagazine on how to design your prelaunch page. 

Maybe it's an urban legend, but rumour has it that one of the Pinterest co-founders secretly set the homepages of all the computers in internet cafes to their site (pinterest.com) so that they get early awareness. 

Not sure how scalable this is, and also the times of internet cafes seems to come to an end, so maybe this is not really the solution to your problem. 

Asking people to share your product (a main driver of growth) is asking for a big leap of faith. 

Even if they like your product, sharing it with friends and therefore recommending it could potentially backfire (e.g. as some products do dodgy stuff which is not obvious at first). It doesn't matter if your product falls into that category or not - all products are affected because this is a perceived risk for users - and they don't share.

Therefore don't give them the idea that they're sharing you. Make them think they share themselves. The Facebook user who invites her friends to join facebook to check out her pictures she uploaded doesn't primarily think about sharing facebook, but her pictures. This makes sharing much smoother (and more likely). 

If you are an expert in something then provide that expertise to journalists via the service HARO.

On HARO you state your expertises, and journalists who are writing articles on the topic reach out to you to "ask an expert" so they get statements they can use in their articles. And you get quoted, and a link to your site - everybody wins. Many startups got mentions in top publications this way. 

Quora, a trendy question-and-answer site, gets a lot of traffic, esp. from search engines. Providing high quality answers therefore often pay off (including a link to your site is allowed - if disclosed). 

Also: you position yourself as expert in a certain field and others (potential business partners) will start reaching out to you.  

If you like Solutionbay then others will too and it will grow... think long-term and post your great solution(s) now - the earlier you post them, the more likes they will get in the long-run, and the higher they will rank. 

Producthunt is a high-traffic website where new internet projects are showcased. Read here how to submit your project. 

Be smart how you go about it. Read some lessons learned how to not post on product hunt and take some lessons from Quora how to have a chance of getting featured (which will really bring you some nice traffic and sign ups). 

There's a reason why the "freemium" model (basic services for free, additional features after premium upgrade) has become so popular: users don't have to take a big leap of faith but first can see if the service can add value to them. Also, after you provided some value, users are also more willing to pay for extra services as they deem it fair (you provided value to them, now it's their turn). First give, then take. 

In a similar vein: Offer your entire service 30 days for free. That way your users get used to it, and don't want to miss it anymore by day 30. Give them the full 30 days, as habits (i.e. getting used to something) usually takes at least 30 days. 

Once you did so, place the statement that you offer things for FREE very vivdly. The word "free" still does magic in the world of marketing. 

Maybe people don't sign up because they are overwhelmed with the amount of content you have on your site.

Less is usually better. De-clutter your site, focus only on the key messages and direct the users to do what you want them to do, i.e. sign up.

This is especially true on the sign up page itself: any button except the sign-up button is distraction. Therefore remove all other buttons, even the navigation, so that the only option the users have is to sign up. 

This might be obvious, but you need to tell your users what they have to do, i.e. place a clear "Call to Action" (CTA) on your site. If it's not clear within seconds what you want visitors to do then it's not clear enough. 

If you have visitors but they don't click on "Sign up", ask them why they don't. Put a chatbox on your site so that they can immediately get in touch with you and you can chat - this may provide you valuable insight what your site is lacking. 

There are many tools which allow to do this, a quick google search will point you to a few.

With an affiliate - or referral - marketing program you can incentivize people to spread the word for you: everytime they refer a client who makes a purchase, they get a share of the revenues. 

Read more about affiliate marketing on Wikipedia. 

Small, nifty & free tools can be a great way to generate interest & traffic which you can then leverage for your main (paid) product. 

For example, Freckle, a paid time-tracking app, launched a cool tool which easily allows you to check the current time in any location in the world. It got press coverage from several high-profile news sites despite (or maybe because) being a very simple tool.

Another example for a free tool is HowMuchToMakeAnApp, a tool which tells visitors how much they can expect it will cost to create a mobile app. Users get taken step by step through the process and asked which features they want in the app, which will define the final price. And, incidentally, at the end users get asked if they need somebody to build the app for them...

Maybe this sounds lame, but if you find a business which is complementary to what you're doing, and maybe struggling (so that it's not so expensive) then acquiring another business can be great for growth. 

For example, think about businesses in your niche which have a lot of users, but are struggling to make money. If you have the revenue-side figured out, then an aquisition can be beneficial for both parties. 

Check out this case study. 

Large events (i.e. many people attending) can be your stage to present your business and do networking.

Have a look at this case study.

People don't have much time to read emails. Keep it to 3-4 sentences at maximum, in separate paragraphs for easier reading. 

For your emails to have a chance of getting read, they need to...

1. Reach your recipient's inbox
2. Get opened

For both points, putting the recipient's first name in the subject line (and the body) helps: Filters see that you're addressing a specific person, thereby classify it less likely as spam, and secondly your recipient feels much more compelled to open the email, without which even the best email content is worthless. 

Selecting the best tags is important: if you pick tags which are used very infrequently by other users, you may just as well use no hashtags at all. 

Ritetag is a simple tool which shows you if the tags you're about to use are useful to get a high visibility of your tweet. 

In order to get a lot of users, you need to provide value to them. So first and foremost you need to ensure that you're working on something which does have a high perceived value to your future users. 

If you're still in the conceptualization phase, then instead of investing time and money for the next 6 months to build your product (on an untested hypothesis), put a simple dummy-page up which looks like it's already doing the real thing, and see how people interact with it. 

For example, if you're a service which helps people to get quick compensation for flight delays (i.e. you're doing all the paperwork and deal with the airlines) then put a website up which looks like it's already live, showing people what the deal is (e.g. you're taking 10% commission from the refunds your clients get), and a large "Sign Up"-button, and see how many people click on it (tracking it with tools like Google Analytics). You can get initial traffic to your site by paying a few dollars for advertising, e.g. on Google Adwords. 

No matter what the feedback is, it's very useful for you: Either it confirms your hypothesis and you're even more eager to implement it, or you learn that what you have in mind is not what people want, so you save your time and money and move on to the next idea which might be the successful one.

Also: this test is not only useful to decide if your idea is good or bad, but you can also do split testing to test other points (e.g. you can change your fee structure and observe what impact it has on (attempted) sign-ups to test the pricing sensitivity of your prospects). 

The idea & philosophy behind this approach is closely related to the Lean Startup Model. Have a look at this introduction video: 

Your existing userbase can be your storngest sales force. Create a product which they love, and then don't be shy about asking them to refer you. If they feel you deserved it, they may even enjoy it because it feels good doing somebody a favor who deserves it. 

If you already have at least some traction, use it to split test your way to success. You never know how people will react - you need to test it. Make little changes on your website, features, pricing strategy etc. Many successful internet companies attribute their success to this strategy. 

The most popular tool (because it's free) to track your users' behavior is Google Analytics, however there is also something to be said for paying a few dollars to use split-testing focused services like Optimizely or Mixpanel. 

If your conversion is low, it is most likely due to a low engagement of visitors on your site. A tool which could change that are quizzes. 

By providing a quiz which is fun or interesting (and it doesn't always have to be directly related to what you do) people stay longer on your site, have a longer "conversation" with you, make them more comfortable and familiar with your site etc. - all of this will be rewarded with a higher conversion. 

Try to make the sign-up process seem very natural, without requiring any "big decisions" from your visitors.

One example is the naming of the social media sign-up buttons. Don't call them "Sign up with Google" or "Sign up with Facebook" but just "Login with Facebook". It's only a subtle, but important difference - some startups managed to increase their conversion rates by 20% and more with this little adjustment.  

The more information you ask from users, the worse your conversion rate will be.

Therefore, only ask them for their email. Other information is not really required initially: You can assign them a password and send it to them by email (which they should be able to easily change of course), same with username (for which you can take the text before the "@" in their email).

One-click sign-ups are the smoothest and quickest for users, so in addition to offering a classic email sign-up option you definitely also have to offer a Facebook login.

Whether you also want to offer Twitter and G+ sign-ups depends on your users; generally it is recommended to offer as many as possible as this allows users to sign-up in their preferred choice, which increases conversion rates. 

In addition, social sign-ups allow you to get more data from your users than just an email, and getting more information about your users may turn out to be very valuable.

The simpler your sign-up process is the better. Therefore, usually one sign-up screen is better than several.

However, there are exceptions. If you absolutely need to ask your users for more information than the basics, or if you discovered that you first need to tell users a lot about your product before they are comfortable with signing up, then it might be better to take users through several steps (and screens) with easy-to-digest content instead of showing all that content on a single page which might be overwhelming.

If you're not sure which approach is better then split test it. The data will tell you the truth. 

More information means more distraction. Therefore, stick to the key messages only and make it a no-brainer for your visitors to understand what you have to offer, and what they have to do next (clear "Call to action"), i.e. sign up. 

The more personal you can make the user experience, the higher your conversion rate will be. Locality can be a key factor to achieve a personal experience.

Therefore, use the users' IPs to determine from where they are coming from, and show matching local content. For example, a dating website which tells users from Dallas that there are "5,234 more singles in Dallas" could massively increase conversion rates with this technique. 

Interestingly, this also works if your product or service isn't linked to a certain city or region at all. For example, if you're a Saas business offering bookkeeping solutions, instead of running an ad saying "The best bookkeeping in the world" try "Simplest bookkeeping for businesses in San Francisco". 

Obviously, if you can then tailor it even further (e.g. only market to startups, and then use the line "Simplest bookkeeping for start-ups in San Francisco"), that's even better. 

Maybe a reason for your low conversion rate is that you're telling all your visitors the same story (i.e. have only one landing page). However, maybe your users are distinctly different from each other.

Therefore, try to segment your target group(s) and create different landing pages for each of them. The more tailor-made your story, the better your conversion, guaranteed. 

Some little tweaks can increase conversion rates significantly, e.g.:

• Rather chose a green button (orange is also ok) than red
• Make sure the font size is large enough so that people immediately understand you want them to click on the button
• Call it "Next" instead of "Sign up" as "Sign up" sounds a bit heavy
• Add a little arrow at the end, e.g. "Next >" 

Those changes don't sound significant, but they can be. Try it out. 

For most startup it proved to be much more valuable to have 100 people who love the product, than 1000 who just like it so-so.

Why passionate users are crucial:

1. They are much more willing to spread the word ("Evangelists")
2. They are much more willing to spend time and effort to give constructive feedback
3. They are much more willing to pay
4. You will get a much closer connection with them, and really understand their needs

An example for the last point is Airbnb: when they were still small, most of their clients were in New York. So they flew over (they're based in San Francisco) to not only meet their clients, but actually live with them! This gave them unique insight, e.g. they realized that many Airbnb hosts didn't have an easy way to make professional pictures (and the better the picture, the easier to find guests), so they helped them with that and knew they have to give tips to future users how to do this easily.

Another way to look at competition: it's not a competition of products, but a competition of business models. 

If you're in the paid advertising space (and you will be eventually, if your company is going to be successful) then you will compete with respect to how much you can pay to advertise. For example, on Google the company's ads will show on top who are capable to pay the most for them. 

Therefore, you need to ensure that the value you get from advertising (e.g. a user clicking on your Google ad) is higher than for your competitor. So think about how to maximize the life-time value of every customer - if it's more than your competitor's then you will dominate the paid advertising space. 

Monetizing a business is not only good for cashing out, but It opens up a whole new world of paid advertising which can fuel your growth. 

Therefore aim to monetize soon. Click on specification "Post-revenue" to get an idea of what you can do once you have cash in the bank.

A low conversion rate might be the result of your website visitors not seeing enough value in the products/services you provide.

This can be broken down into:

1. Either your visitors don't see how well your products/services are suited to solve their problem or
2. They don't perceive the problem they have as a big issue
   
   

While you should also take care of the first point (i.e. present your offering in the most convincing way) it also makes sense to think how you could make people realize how big their problem actually is. 

My favorite example for this is a popular mouth wash called Listerine. It was invented in the 1880s. At first it wasn't a mouthwash but used as an antispetic. Sales were good but not great, so the owner of the company decided to focus the marketing on Listerine's positive effect on bad breath. However, instead of just advertising it as a product against bad breath, he created a fake medical condition, taking the latin word "halitis" and adding "osis" to it, i.e. creating the word "halitosis", which sounds like a medical condition. He spread the word about this "medical condition" (which even made it into the dictionary, and is widely accepted now, see Wikipedia) and people were much more compelling to buy the product as they thought they were suffering not just from bad breath but from a medical condition!

Little tweaks in wordings can sometimes make a big difference to conversion rates.

Some examples: 

• Change generic claims into concrete benefits. Visualize adjectives. Not "our support team is very quick" but "We'll get you an answer within 24 hours."
• If your readers feel you're trying to persuade them, they develop resistance. Instead, throw in a "... but you are free", "You can decide", "It's up to you..." etc. to emphasize their freedom to choose. This can quadruple conversion rates as mentioned in this study.
• Some websites almost doubled their conversions by replacing "you" with "my", e.g. instead of saying "Start your free 30 days trial" they used "Start my free 30 days trial"

Re-targeting (or re-marketing) means that you advertise to people who already know you. For example, a user comes to your site, puts a product into a shopping cart, but never makes the purchase. You then show him ads on other websites (e.g. Facebook), telling the user to come back to your site and complete the purchase. 

Re-targeting is very effective because the users already know you, i.e. you are already familiar to them. 

There are different applications you can use re-targeting for, have a look at this introduction: 

It's rarely the "one big idea" which brings tons of users, but the process of trying out a lot of different things and seeing if it works. Therefore, you need to increase your "failing speed" so that you find out what works more quickly. 

Important: Don't just fail, but ensure you have the processes in place to learn from your failures. 

Morgan Brown from Growthhackers.com explains this very well in below presentation. 

For example, have a look at this growthhacking toolkit on Github.

If people don't convert (e.g. for signing up to your newsletter) and you are offering a free product or service (e.g. "Enter your email to get this free eBook") then consider adding a virtual price tag to it, e.g. "valued at 100 USD". 

This almost always increases conversion rates. Apparently people see higher value in something they get for free if it "usually" costs money. 

Maybe your conversion rate is low because people check out your competitors after they've visited to your site.

One counter-intuitive way to reduce this risk is by mentioning your competitors on your site. Readers feel like they already did their homework, so it's more likely that they will pick you.

Explain your shortcomings, however give them a positive spin. For example, mention that your product doesn't offer a specific feature because you decided to focus on the area which is relevant to your target market.  

101 growth hacks (affiliate link) is a quick read and at just over a dollar a real steal. 

If you're into apps, also check out the Enterprise Apps guide (affiliate link). 

Building up a presence on social media can be beneficial in several ways: 

1. People become aware about you and visit your site & sign up
2. Once you have a good number of followers: you are showing that people follow you, which makes it more like that others take you seriously also 
3. It can be a good tool to reach out to influencers

If you don't know how to go about, have a look at how to build up followership on social media.